


Everything Halved or Merged

by signalbeam



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Open Marriage, Operas, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:41:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22015033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: "If an opera is made about my life someday, I wonder how I'll be portrayed. The revolutionary who guided the Empire to a new dawn, or the foolish ruler who took her revolution too far?"In the summer, the people of Fhirdiad puts on a festival to celebrate their victory. Linhardt, on sabbatical from Garreg Mach, goes to see an opera with an old friend.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Linhardt von Hevring, Dorothea Arnault/Linhardt von Hevring, Dorothea Arnault/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 21
Kudos: 60





	Everything Halved or Merged

Fortunately, Fhirdiad had a decent enough library in that little sorcery school of theirs for him to study in. Otherwise, his trip north would have been completely unbearable. 

Linhardt had managed to leave Garreg Mach during the rainy season, only to end up in Fhirdiad in the worst of its impossible summer. Fhirdiad rested in a rocky plain thrust high in the air. He had traveled to Fhirdiad a few times before, mostly during the war, and the most color the land took was an almost transparent yellow-green in the spring and a faded red in the fall. Downtown Fhirdiad was made in the Adrestian style: lots of stone, straight, square roads, houses painted in different shades of white and gray. The white glare reminded him of being snow blind—also something he had experienced in Faerghus. If he had known, as a schoolboy, that joining the professor’s class meant he’d have to spend so much time on horses or in snow, he would have stayed with the Black Eagles. The Blue Lions and the army they became were much too physical for his liking. 

Linhardt was at the library for almost two months without anyone recognizing him. He was not famous in the way the others were. People at the Royal School of Sorcery recognized him as a young professor at Garreg Mach and guessed he had fought in the war, but everyone had fought in the war back then, and he had those snobby Adrestian manners. People were more likely to think he had fought for the Empire-that-was. A few etchings and statues and such of his likeness had been commissioned by Dimitri, but he usually skipped meeting the artist, so he doubted his face in the art resembled him at all. He had seen portraits of King Dimitri and Duke Fraldarius and Margrave Gautier a few times, and their appearances were bizarre: enormously muscular yet deathly formal, their faces symbolic husks of paint, meant not to evoke the living body, but the shapes of what they should become to History. 

He was prepared to spend the next year or so in the library, free from all of his irksome responsibilities, when Dorothea found him reading between the shelves. It had been too much of a bother to lug all the books back with him, so he had decided to settle in the aisles with a flame from his finger for light. He looked up and saw her and sighed. Now, he knew, his carefree days of studying were over. 

“Shouldn’t you be in Gautier lands?” he said, snuffing his flame. “I’m busy. Go away.” 

“Mercedes wrote from Garreg Mach asking about how your sabbatical was going, and all I could say was that I hope you hadn’t been killed by bandits. These days, I don’t think you’d fight back,” Dorothea said. “You could have at least written, you know. Sylvain and I take our summers in the city. I’ve spent the last two days running around asking after you—” 

“How nice. Goodbye.” 

“—and it’s been five years,” she said, ignoring him. She picked him up by the back of the shirt and dragged him away. He would have thought that she’d become more docile and less driven after marrying Sylvain—wasn’t that what happened when women married?—but apparently not. What Dorothea wanted, she took. “Up, silly.” 

“I’d rather stay here and work,” he said, but let his feet support him and obediently walked forward. “Fine. If you’re going to take the trouble, then I suppose we can get some fresh air.”

“That’s a good boy. You look like you’re about to faint from the heat, poor thing,” Dorothea said. 

“I’m rarely out during this time of day,” Linhardt said. He stretched his arms. “It’s better to avoid exerting yourself in this time of day. And why are all these people doing out here?”

“It’s the first day of the week-long victory anniversary festival. How do you not know? Have you just not left the basement in the last month?” 

“Of course I’ve left the basement. They have bathing facilities on campus.” 

They had a cordial lunch at a restaurant. Just as Linhardt thought, she didn’t bring up his attendance at the wedding. He had been invited but hadn’t gone, as it seemed too much to travel all the way to the Gautier house for a party. He had sent some flowers and a packet of his research on Sreng battle strategies, knowing Dorothea wouldn’t expect him there. He didn’t feel bad for missing the ceremony. If anything, he was glad he missed it. Weddings were so stilted and formal, and it wasn’t like they’d never see each other again. Case in point: here they were now. 

Besides, she and Sylvain never struck him as one of those passionate love matches; there was too much calculation between them. If it had been a love match, he would have gone, if only to study. He had never seen one up close before. 

In the restaurant, she asked after him and laughed when he said he was a professor at the academy, with students and everything. 

“I cannot _imagine_ you doing half the things the professor did for us,” Dorothea said. “Asking about our goals, enrolling us in tournaments—”

“If they have no sense of their goals before coming, then nothing I say will persuade them,” Linhardt said. 

“We were kids once, too. We were so impressionable. Most of us. Not you.”

“You’re just the same, too.” He was happy to say that. People changing without warning was not something he was fond of. She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. A disagreement? He decided to let it go. He was right about this and she’d come around soon enough. “I don’t see why they can’t hire more professors. Or ask Mercedes to take on more teaching duties. She would if Byleth asked.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you’re doing right by them.”

“I know I’m not half the instructor Byleth was, or even Hanneman or Manuela. The children—they’re children. And not even clever ones.” 

“It doesn’t hurt to say their names anymore, does it?” Dorothea said. “The other night, Sylvain was joking about how often he took Manuela back to her rooms, and I wasn’t angry with him at all.” 

“Please, let’s not get sentimental,” he said, even as he knew it was a lost cause. Manuela had always been Dorothea’s favorite teacher, and she was already tearing up. 

As they ate, people occasionally came up to them, sometimes to say kind things to Dorothea about a show she had been in, to thank her for her military service, sometimes to just to make pointless overtures. She would smile and thank them or rebuff their advances. After a while, she started shooing them away more bluntly: I’m having lunch with an old friend and don’t have time to entertain you now, thank you. She put her hand over his and looked at the intruders pointedly. He played along, if only because she’d be displeased if he said they weren’t having an affair in the way she was insinuating. The only true disruption came when a woman came and Dorothea stood up to kiss her cheek. 

“This is my friend, Edelgard,” Dorothea said. 

“I don’t think so,” Linhardt said, taken aback. How strange, to hear Edelgard’s name after all this time. He still associated Edelgard with the sweetest parts of his school days at Garreg Mach, along with the worst days of the war. The two memories sat side-by-side. 

“I only play her for the festival,” the woman said. She was tall, ruddy-skinned, and had long, black hair pulled back in a braid. “I’m Sabina Rainer.” 

“She sings beautifully,” Dorothea said, and Sabina’s cheeks flushed. Dorothea’s hand rested between Sabina’s shoulder blades, and her expression was strange: deferential yet cold. It was how she used to look at nobles when they were in school, but everything about Sabina screamed peasant stock: her clothes, which were well-made but lacked the fine details, like the inlaid pearl buttons on Dorothea’s dress or the delicate lace trimmings, her broad, sunned out face, the way she kept looking cautiously between Dorothea and Linhardt, like she was scared of being hit by one of them. “This is Linhardt.” 

“The Linhardt?” Sabina said. 

“Yes, that would be me,” Linhardt said. “Pleased to meet you. Are you in the play, Dorothea?” 

“No,” Dorothea said. “They began producing in the fall, and with Sylvain worried about the border, I thought it’d be best to stay in Gautier to support him. All I’ve been able to do is offer notes during rehearsals. But they don’t need my talents. Fhirdiad has a deep talent pool. Sabina, dear, are you on stage tonight?” 

“Yes, yes, I am. But I think I may try to spend time with my younger siblings… not that I want your coaching to go to waste, but my little brother…” 

“Your little brother is not an artist and doesn’t respect your talents or understand how difficult your role is,” Dorothea said. “Do you have time today? I can give you some notes, or we can go shopping together and fix up that sad sack they call a costume.” 

The two women went back and forth, Sabina demurring and trying to refuse, and Dorothea, like a cat with a fly, cutting down all of Sabina’s excuses. 

“Excellent,” Dorothea said. “Lin, I’ll see you tonight, yes? You must see Sabina in the play. We can have dinner beforehand, just you and me.” 

“Yes, fine,” he said. “You’ll pick me up? Goodbye.” 

He left the restaurant on his own, but since he didn’t know how to get back to the School of Scorcery or want to talk to anyone, he went in the direction of the park. He’d know the way back to the school from there. But the crowd of people only grew thicker, and when he arrived at the park, tall tents and booths had been set up and people were festive, merry, and glad. The children were in costume: the blue robes of Kingdom warlock, the blue doublet coats of a Kingdom infantryman, imitations of the winged helmets of a Kingdom pegasus knight… and, in red and black, young boys swinging their fists or wearing masks with tufts of orange hair sticking out, young girls with their long hair braided and rough colors streaked on their cheeks, boys and girls alike wearing headbands with spiraling horns and red slashes along their throats. The detail was wrong: Edelgard hadn’t been decapitated. She had been speared through. 

Seeing the children in masks, he looked about to see if anyone resembling him was in the mix. Some children sang and wore roses; Dorothea. Some shirtless kids—possibly Raphael, but just as likely, children being idiots. 

People always made it sound like Edelgard had forced her generals to stay, or that they were pure evil, but Linhardt suspected Edelgard had tried pushing them into the other classes, knowing that anyone who stood by her might die. It was true that she and Hubert were of the same type of busybody who could never stop talking about potential and action and the importance of turning potential into action and, by being turned into action, made into use, but she and Hubert really ramped it up in the weeks leading up to his departure. Hubert would find him and take a deep breath, preparing a speech, or Edelgard would hunt him down in a field—some of them so far that it was more work to get there than it was to go to class—and haul him back, all while talking on and on about their future. He thought they’d follow him into the Blue Lion’s classroom to lecture him about patriotism or national pride, but they let him go. The people left standing by Edelgard’s side at the onset of the war were loyal to her personally or too thickheaded to question what they were walking into or both. Ferdinand, Petra, Hubert, poor Bernadetta, and Caspar became generals of one army, and Linhardt and Dorothea generals of the winners. Edelgard, being dead, could not say why she had made it so that the others should die and Linhardt should survive to see their old friends brought back as jokes. 

An old man at a rickety table waved at him and shouted, “You look like a man in need of his fortune read!” 

“I absolutely am not,” Linhardt said and walked away as quickly as possible. 

He liked thinking about his future even less than he liked to remember his school days or his childhood. He liked the present much better. He had all the time he wanted to sleep, research, and pursue his obsessions. The only thing he disliked was that no one understood Empire idioms. 

For example, “There are wolves in the bog!” Meaning, “Something’s not right here.” 

Or, “This idiot’s done me a bearfavor!” Meaning, “To do harm while intending to do good.”

Or, “It’s never so bad that it’s not good for something.” Meaning exactly what it said, yet often misunderstood anyway. 

#

He went back to his room and took a nap. The heat exhausted him, and the fair had filled his mind with thoughts of the past, which he couldn’t wait to unburden himself of through sleep. He was always grateful for sleep coming easily to him. Nothing seemed worse than to be kept up late at night, thinking of things he should have done, things he could have done, things the dead might want to ask him. 

He woke up to Dorothea knocking on his door. He greeted her, still mussed up from flopping over in bed. Dorothea, gallantly, ignored that and kissed his cheek as she stepped in. 

“Oh, your perfume…” He coughed a few times. At first, pleasant; then, the sour, rotting musk underneath. 

“People who like women like it, Lin.” She looked around his rooms and said, “I’m sorry I’m early. Am I interrupting?” 

“It’s nothing. I was—” He stifled a yawn. “Well, you see. Is it dinner already?” 

“Not yet. I wanted to come by and give you a chance to drop out. I meant it to be just the two of us, but Sylvain’s heard you’re in town and he’s invited Felix, who’s invited Dmitri and his wife.” 

“Sounds boring and like trouble,” Linhardt said. “No thanks.”

She laughed at that, then said, “So you wouldn’t go even if it was for me?” 

“I wouldn’t do it for anyone unless they were holding a knife to my back,” he said sincerely. “I’ll see your play, though. I already promised to. Is there something else I can do?” 

“Oh—! I don’t know what anyone can do for me,” Dorothea said and sat on his bed with her head in her hands. “If there’s one thing you should skip, it’s that awful play.” Her lip quivered. She looked almost ready to cry. 

Linhardt waited a second to see if she might actually spill over. He had never known Dorothea to be excessive with her feelings; it was one of her most charming points as a woman. But the fact that she was getting so emotional alarmed him. What had happened to her over the years? When she managed to hold it together, he said, “We could skip that, too.” 

“It’s too late. The King will be there.” 

“Forget them.”

“I _can’t_ , Lin.” 

“Forget them,” he said. “Be with me. There’s an entire festival, and there’s no reason for you to be there if you’ve already seen it. Besides, why not give that husband of yours something to really be jealous about?” 

“What could you ever mean?” 

“You wanted people at lunch to think you were having an affair with me. I don’t know why, but you wanted Sylvain to hear about it, didn’t you?”

She gave him a look, but didn’t deny it. There was a new edge to her: the way she angled her head so her hair almost fell into her eyes, the way she brought her shoulders in to emphasize her cleavage, the ‘oh, so you noticed’ in her smile. And the fact that she was the only person left in the world who knew his whole history and cared not just for the him he was now, but the Linhardt he had been, before. He rarely slept with women, but it wouldn’t be a trial to be with her. Not by any means. 

“It’s perfectly understandable,” Linhardt said. “Seeing me, you remembered good times and became libidinous.” 

“With lines that bad, I should throw you out!” 

“But it’s my room.” 

She was right about the perfume: it smelled better now that he wanted her. He removed his robes and stood before her in his underwear. Dorothea was staring at him, incredulous but not, he thought, unaroused. 

“Lin, you’re shameless,” she said, her voice quivering this time with suppressed laughter. “Do you have any technique? Have you ever tried seducing anyone? Romancing them, even?” 

“No,” he said. “But why should I need to? You’re interested, aren’t you?” He kissed her cheek, then her mouth, and she returned his kiss and soon had control of it: her hand on his waist and his jaw, pulling him in close. She told him how to take off her dress, and had him drape it carefully across two chairs so it wouldn’t wrinkle. 

The inside of her was a good, hot place, a place for him to empty out his mind. He could do a lot of thinking here; not for research or lecture planning or anything like that, but a type of thinking about people, which he rarely did and usually found a waste of time. But up close, rocking into Dorothea, it was impossible to not think about her. Should he ask her to come back with him to Garreg Mach? Not even as a lover—it’d be pointless if they saw each other all the time. But why not leave Fhirdiad and Gautier, with the hot summers and freezing winters, for somewhere more temperate and sedate? A spell of vigor momentarily came over him; he was close enough that he pulled out of her and covered her mouth with a kiss to keep her from protesting. He was going to jerk himself off, but she had him get on his back—how relaxing—and took him into her mouth. He didn’t last long, especially after she reached between her legs to slick her fingers and slid a finger into his ass. 

He finished her off with his hands and got a wrist cramp for his trouble. It wasn’t wasted effort: she was almost painfully beautiful coming around his fingers, in her sincere pleasure and vulnerability. He should have sex more often, although seeking it out would be a pain. 

Afterwards, he filled a wash basin with hot water for them to wipe themselves down. She borrowed his comb to straighten her hair back out. 

“Do you have anyone at Garreg Mach you’re not telling me about?” she said. 

“No.” 

She gave him a worried look. Then she said, “Sometimes I think I’m living in _his_ happiness and _his_ future, not in ours. Not that I would want my gutter days following us, but I wish more of some part of my life came with me. He still thinks I married him for his Crest. He doesn’t say so, but I know he thinks it. And I still think—” Her voice caught. “Thank you for this, Lin.”

“Thank you, Dorothea.” He helped her back into her dress. He didn’t know anything about marriage and found it almost indescribably unappealing, but it clearly meant something to her, even if it wasn’t something he understood. “Should we not have done this?” 

“Sylvain and I have an understanding. It’s just—I don’t want you to be lonely.” 

“It’s too late for that,” he said, laughing. “They all died during the war.” 

She wasn’t laughing, but she did let herself smile. 

“Who would you have liked to be with?” she said. 

“Caspar would have been worth a try,” he said. That old name on his lips felt like pressing on a bruise. “Hubert, if he weren’t so devoted to Edelgard. Ferdinand, Petra… oh, not her. I don’t know. When I was younger, it would have been unimaginable, but I’m realizing I didn’t…” 

The more he talked, the more that bruise hurt. It was a relief when the clock in the center of the school went off. He knew if he got upset, she’d be upset, too, and they had been having such a nice time. 

Dorothea hurried to rearrange her dress and makeup. 

“Most of your perfume rubbed off onto my sheets,” Linhardt said as she went out the door. 

She put her face against his shoulder and took a deep breath, and smiled up at him in a wicked, enchanting way. 

“So it has,” she said. 

#

Even though he knew he didn’t have to go to the play, he decided to go. He got there late and ran into Felix scowling at the fortune teller while Sylvain tried to pull him to the tent, where the play was. 

“—the dead want doesn’t matter,” Felix was saying when Linhardt approached. “People like you are parasites, preying on people’s need to—”

“Linhardt!” Sylvain said, putting a hand on the small of Felix’s back to get his attention. It didn’t work: Felix went on berating the fortuneteller. “Nice to see you. You’re as pretty as ever.”

“And you still look like a scoundrel,” Linhardt said, even though it wasn’t true: Sylvain cleaned up well. 

Sylvain winked at him. “Dorothea’s inside, along with Dimitri. Tell her we’ll be in soon, okay?” 

He found Dorothea in the box, raised high above the rest of the commoner audience. Dimitri and his wife were already there. Linhardt bowed with one too many flourishes; he saw the queen’s mouth pucker. He kissed both of their hands, as was tradition in Faerghus. A pretty terrible one, if you asked him. 

“Your Majesty, what a pleasure it is to see you after all this time,” Linhardt said, straightening back up. 

“Are you in good health?” Dimitri said. “How’s the archbishop?”

“She’s doing well. Very resistant to helping with my experiments, I’m afraid.” 

“I should hope she is,” he said, smiling. He was almost never shown smiling in the portraits and statues, and Linhardt felt his brain wrinkle trying to accept the image with his eyes. “When you return to Garreg Mach, tell her we’re planning on making a visit soon. I’m in need of some guidance, and she never writes.”

“Yes, it’s such a pain. Your Majesty.” 

Dorothea was sitting in the corner. Her view would be partially obstructed by the corner post. He moved to sit behind her so Sylvain could be seated next to her, but she patted the seat next to hers and he went. 

“I’m surprised you came,” Dorothea said. 

“I was invited,” he said. 

She took his hand in hers—a surprising, bold move, one he at first balked at, then relaxed into. The lights in the audience were being put out and the gas lamps and chandelier by the stage came to life. The chorus stepped onto stage. Sylvain and Felix came in late. Felix sat on Dimitri’s other side and Sylvain sat behind Dorothea. He draped his arms around Dorothea and smelled her hair. 

“There you are,” Dorothea said. “Did you have to help Felix take the body of that fortuneteller away?” 

“Quartered, beheaded, buried in the woods. I know, that’s a terrible thing to say. I’m just awful.” 

“Yet it never stops you,” she said. She turned around so she could kiss him. The circle of his arms around her drew tight. She patted his cheek and said, “Let’s pay attention, dear.” 

It was a lower form of opera than the more refined ones Linhardt had grown up with. The melodies were more folkish and the costuming more garish and the audience loud and jeering. It was a war opera that began with Sabina-as-Edelgard coming onto the stage in all red, like some kind of demented, pajama-wearing elf, with some actor in all black, too small to be Hubert, trailing after her. Occasionally the fake Hubert gyrated his hips and thrust into Sabina as she sang, quite well, about war. Then a man in a red wig came and sang his lines, looking rakish. He seemed to almost match the seriousness of Edelgard’s tone until boos came from the audience. He went over to Sabina and ground into her from the front, while the tiny Hubert continued fucking away from the back. Linhardt couldn’t help but look around the box. Sylvain wasn’t laughing; Felix looked bored; but Dimitri and the queen were both smiling at the stage. How cruel, he thought. 

Then the comedy portion was over and the war on stage began. The Adrestians were continually foolish, debauched, and idiotic. He knew this was, in part, what death-in-defeat meant: the rapid, startling diminishment of one’s being, the conversion from human to blood and meat—but there was a secondary death, the death of one’s self-conception. This was not how the war was. He knew this because he had fought in it and seen it as history. And even as he knew it was necessary for the people of Faerghus to see their foe vanquished on stage, it was hardly fair. Those characters on stage had bodies that were still warm to his mind’s touch. 

The gas lights gave off a disagreeable odor and kept flickering. Dorothea had let go of his hand when Sylvain arrived, but now she took it again as Sabina made her second appearance on stage. This time, Sabina threw away any pretense of dignity. She tilted her hips towards Hubert, she performed vocal acrobatics and let her voice crack; she made many references to heads coming off or giving head. A few times, Dimitri laughed, a sound halfway between a guffaw and disgust. 

“They decapitate her in this version, don’t they,” Linhardt said. 

“Yes. I think the audience finds it reassuring.” 

“Gotta vanquish the big bad wolf,” Sylvain said. 

He considered closing his eyes and falling asleep, but Dorothea was still watching. How many times had she seen this in rehearsal? He wished that, when he declined to join Edelgard, he had simply run off into the woods. 

He didn’t know what made it unbearable. Was it when Edelgard fucked a wyvern, or when Ingrid fisted Caspar to death? He was always of the belief that there was nothing you couldn’t run away from, and he chose now to make use of this belief. He stood up. Dorothea looked away from the stage. He mouthed, ‘Let’s go?’ at her, and she shook her head. He didn’t understand it, but he did have an idea why: she felt like she had to see it through, this horrible, bizarre mirror of their lives for the second or third or fourth time; however many times it took. But that, he thought, was her choice. He walked right past the king and queen, and, ignoring the clearly marked aisles, exited through a tent flap. 

He emerged not too far from the fortuneteller stand, though the fortuneteller himself was gone, and there was a dent in the stand about the size of a man’s fist. The fortuneteller’s implements had been left behind, including a deck of tarot cards. He drew one. 

“Death,” Felix said. 

Even without a war on, Felix carried multiple swords on him. And he wore the king’s coat of arms. Linhardt had heard Felix was extremely devoted to Dimitri.

“Hello, Felix,” he said. “Do you have something to say to me?” 

“Not you.” Felix gestured, roughly, at the cards, then crossed his arms. “These types of stupid charlatans always draw death first.” 

Linhardt turned the card over. 

“It’s the Lovers,” he said. 

“Whatever. I hate that play, too. It makes a mockery of everyone who gave their lives for peace.” 

“We all knew what we were getting into when we joined,” Linhardt said. “The commoners have a right to judge us according to their values. After all, we led plenty of them to their deaths.” 

He supposed Felix was upset over seeing his former classmates in the play. Ingrid, Annette, Dedue, and Ashe had died during the war. Which ones had Felix been close to? He had forgotten. 

They could hear the singing even from out here. The performers had strong diaphragms. 

“You never did care for anyone but yourself,” Felix said, shaking his head. “But even you had to have hated it. Go on, say it.” 

“Why do I have to say it?” Linhardt said. “Why are you so stubborn? Fine, I hate it. I hate that I fought in a war and won. I was born during a cursed time, and yet I’ve come out on top.”

He drew a second card from the fortuneteller’s deck, but did not turn it over. 

Felix scoffed. 

“You’re not doing nearly as well as you think you are,” he said. “People without principles or a homeland are breathing corpses, if you ask me.” 

“But I didn’t ask you. You’re very irritating.” The card in his hand trembled. He put it back in the deck. As annoying as it was, Felix had struck a nerve. Since when did Felix become someone who could speak to him that way? They had barely talked during the war… 

Felix was standing close enough that the air between them had a static spark. Linhardt squinted at him. He wasn’t used to seeing Felix from here. The Fraldarius Crest was remarkably powerful, but not that interesting compared to the others… He had always found Felix handsome, but far too bloodthirsty for his tastes. Maybe that had changed. 

“We have to go back,” Felix said. “It’s important to see things through to their ends.” 

Linhardt supposed Felix had a point. He had already won the war; what harm could come of watching it again on the stage? 

Sylvain was next to Dimitri when they returned. Felix sat behind Dorothea and Linhardt, even though Linhardt pointed out that they would block his view. Dorothea and Felix chatted for a bit: “I thought you’d invite me to operas you sang in…” “I warned you…” And after a while, Sylvain and Felix switched places, as though they felt like they had to make sure there was always someone next to the king at all time. 

Linhardt had always seen theater as a mostly frivolous pursuit, but he couldn’t help being moved by the opera, even if he was mostly angry. His own operatic self, a long-haired dandy, showed up nearly at the end, mostly to flee Edelgard and run to beg Dimitri, by way of sucking his dick, for a place to hide. The opera made him out to be a coward, someone who faked fainting to get out of danger, and outrageously self-centered. It was not completely baseless. Like the rest of the play, he could see the broad strokes of the way he and his friends would live on in the future: the real people, the historical figures, the tragic heroes, the sex-crazed fops. He didn’t want all of those versions of himself and his friends with him, but he could hardly stop people from putting on shows, even if he wanted to. 

As the play ended, Dorothea sighed and put her hands together twice, almost noiselessly. As the great applause went on, she leaned over and said, “And that’s it! The finest talents in Fhirdiad put to work. I never thought it would be that bad.” 

“I told you we should’ve left.” 

“We can’t without making a scene. Look.” Dimitri was standing in the box and waving at the people. He looked sheepish and awkward, like he had sincerely thought no one had noticed him. Some people probably would have found it charming. Linhardt found it annoying. 

“We might have finally found something too bad to make anything good of it,” Linhardt said. 

“What?” 

“I said, ‘it's so bad we might not be able to make anything good of it.’ Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten—”

“I haven’t forgotten. It’s too loud to hear anything,” Dorothea said. Down below, the audience whistled with approval. They shouted and begged for the actors to come back on stage. “Sylvain keeps trying to teach me the Faerghus version of that saying, but I can never remember it. ‘Even the clouds occasionally breaks apart in silver?’ I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to me.” 

“Hmm,” he said. He wanted to say more, but couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t also disparaging. Marriage, he was learning, had a way of rearranging alliances and tolerances. “Why didn’t we get married after the war?” 

She smiled down at the stage, where the actors were lining up for their final bow, down at the people of Fhirdiad. There was no contempt or dislike in it, but he suspected she wasn’t surprised by his question, that she had asked herself this some years before. He was late, then, for his chance at this type of happiness. 

“Where to begin?” she said. “You don’t like women that much, I didn’t want to stay in Garreg Mach, and you never asked. I’m a traditional girl, you know. I like a courting.” All fair points, admittedly. She put her hand on his back and leaned in close. “It’s nothing against you, Lin. And it’s all turned out for the best this way—happy.” 

The roar of the crowd as the actress playing Edelgard stepped onto the stage swallowed up one of her words. Had she said ‘everyone’ or ‘everybody’ is happy? He didn’t need to look to far to prove her demonstrably wrong. Unless she had said, ‘Faerghus is happy.’ That would be a true statement. ‘We should be happy?’ 

The people below clapped and clapped for what felt like years. They are not my enemies, he thought; nonetheless, their joy had the sound of wolves' teeth ripping into their kill. 

**Author's Note:**

> "You play on Classic?" you might ask me. Absolutely not, but I can definitely pretend that I do.


End file.
